and come in and paint.' Morris chuckled as he emphasised the words. The other story was of Holman Hunt, who spent several years out in Palestine getting local colour for his Scriptural paintings. Hunt, Morris said, knew the Arabic tongue well, but for reasons of personal safety pretended not to know it, in order to hear the Mussulmans talk freely among themselves. One day, as he was encamped by the Dead Sea, painting in the mountain landscape of his picture 'The Scapegoat,' a number of Arabs gathered round him and watched him paint with great surprise and curiosity—for painting, or the making of images of 'anything in the Heavens above or the Earth beneath,' is strictly forbidden in the Mohammedan religion. They could not at all understand the purpose of Hunt's sitting there for hours, painting bit by bit the mountains beyond, and offered each other all manner of extraordinary explanations of the artist's conduct. At last one of them, with an air of triumph, exclaimed 'I understand it, I understand it! He has discovered that there is gold in the rocks, and he is putting the rocks into that frame so that when he takes it to England he may extract the gold out of them!' This quaint explanation (which Morris added had perhaps more truth in it than they were aware of!) was acclaimed delightedly by the Arabs.
One of his stories about his business affairs concerned a former manager of the firm, Warington Taylor, who was, Morris said, a strangely silent and reserved man. Until this manager came Morris had never, so he said, understood whether the business was paying its way or not; but this man every year at Christmas time gave him a statement of accounts, which always included a sort of 'budget,' or of what Morris' own outlays during the next year ought to be, even to quite personal details—such as so much for wine, so much for books, for benevolence, and so on. Morris never knew whether the manager was at all inclined favourably towards Socialism, but when he died suddenly a curious thing came to light. Morris had to examine
